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Microsoft Azure Security

By Yendis LambertOn October 12, 2015November 30, 20150 Comments

As we all know in this day and age our workloads are more likely to migrate to the cloud which I’m sure you all know has it’s benefits and it’s inherent downsides. One discussion point on everyone’s mind is always security (so it should be), just how secure is the cloud. One thing to bear in mind is that your time and approach to defining security principles should be no different to that of on-premises. Having worked with Azure for a number years I just wanted to share some pertinent information around the security model specifically with Azure.

The following diagram shows various layers of security Azure provides to customers both native in the Azure platform itself and through customer defined features

Before Internet traffic can get to the Azure Virtual Networks, there are two layers of security inherent to the Azure platform:

DDoS Protection: Distributed Denial of Service Protection (DDoS) is a layer of the Azure physical network that protects the Azure platform itself from large scale internet based attacks where attackers use multiple “bot” nodes in an attempt to overwhelm an Internet service. Azure has a robust DDoS protection mesh on all inbound internet connectivity. This DDoS protection layer, has no user configurable attributes and is not accessible to customer. This protects Azure as a platform from large scale attacks, but will not directly protect individual customer application. Additional layers of resilience can be configured by the customer against a localized attack. For example; if customer A was attacked with a large scale DDoS attack on a public endpoint, Azure will block connections to that service. Customer A could fail-over to another Virtual Network or Service Endpoint not involved with the attack to restore service. It should be noted that while customer A could be affected on that endpoint, no other services outside of that endpoint would be affected. In addition, other customers and services would see no impact from that attack.

Service Endpoints: endpoints allow Cloud Services or Resource Groups to have public (on the Internet) IP addresses and ports exposed, the endpoint will NAT traffic to the internal address and port on the Azure Virtual Network. This is the primary path for external traffic to pass into the Azure Virtual Network. The Service Endpoints are user configurable to determine which traffic is passed in, and how/where its translated to on the Virtual Network.

Once traffic reaches the Virtual Network, there are many features that come into play as Azure Virtual Networks are the foundation for customers to attach their workloads and where basic network level security applies. It is a private network (a virtual network overlay) in Azure for customers with the following features and characteristics:

Traffic isolation: A virtual network is the traffic isolation boundary on the Azure platform. VMs in one virtual network cannot communicate directly to VMs in a different virtual network, even if both virtual networks are created by the same customer. This is a critical property that ensures customer VMs and communication remains private within a virtual network.

Multi-tier topology: Virtual Networks allow customers to define multi-tier topology by allocating subnets and designating separate address spaces for different elements or “tiers” of their workloads. These logical groupings and topologies enable customers to define different access policy based on the workload types, and also control traffic flows between the tiers.

Network Security Group (NSG) allows customers to create rules (ACLs) at the desired level of granularity: network interfaces, individual VMs, or virtual subnets. Customers can control access by permitting or denying communication between the workloads within a virtual network, from systems on customer’s networks via cross premises connectivity, or direct Internet communication.

User-Defined Routes (UDR) and IP Forwarding allows customers to define the communication paths between different tiers within a virtual network. Customers can deploy a firewall, IDS/IPS, and other virtual appliances and route network traffic through these security appliances for security boundary policy enforcement, auditing, and inspection.

Network Virtual Appliances in the Azure Marketplace: Security appliances such as firewalls, load balancers, and IDS/IPS (Intrusion Detection/Prevention Services) are available in the Azure Marketplace and the VM Image Gallery. Customers can deploy these appliances into their virtual networks, and specifically, at their security boundaries (including the DMZ subnets) to complete a multi-tiered secure network environment.

I hope this information will help you decide on the best method of securing your workloads.